Training in your own business: what you arrange beforehand

Training a car technician runs over several years and is therefore the longest commitment a small business makes to one person. It is at the same time the only route at the end of which stands a tradesperson nobody had to buy away — every other lever for getting staff takes on somebody another business trained.

This article goes through the questions in the order they actually arise: first suitability, then the agreement, then the duties in day-to-day work, then the examinations, and finally the question that decides the whole investment — whether the apprentice stays afterwards. What binds is always what the body that recognises training businesses in your country says; the rules differ in their details and they change.

A distinction is drawn between the suitability of the workplace and the suitability of the people. Both have to be there, and both are examined before a placement is recognised and the agreement registered.

If your business does not cover everything

A pure service workshop without bodywork or without certain diagnostic equipment is not a ground for refusal. The usual route is cooperation: part of the content is delivered at a partner business or in a training centre, agreed in writing and notified. What is missing in your setup you find out beforehand — that conversation pays off before you advertise a placement, not after.

The training programme also has specialisms, among them systems and high-voltage technology. Which specialisms currently exist and which you can genuinely offer in your business is something to discuss with the body that recognises the placement, rather than reading it off an old summary.

A training agreement is not an employment contract under a different name. What it has to contain as a minimum is prescribed, and a few points are not freely negotiable.

• Probation: there is a minimum and a maximum. Within that period either side can stop without giving reasons — outside it, no longer.
• After that the business can as a rule only terminate for serious cause, while the apprentice can stop at short notice if they want to end the training or continue in a different trade. That asymmetry is built in deliberately.
• The allowance: it has to be appropriate, and in most systems there is a floor that is adjusted annually, rising across the years of training. If you fall under a collective agreement, that applies.
• Duration and shortening: earlier schooling can count. That request goes to the body that recognises the training, not into the agreement itself.

Never quote the current minimum allowance from memory: it attaches to the calendar year in which the training starts and is adjusted periodically. The body that recognises your placement will give you the figure for the actual starting year in one sentence.

What an apprentice really costs the business

The allowance is the visible part. On top come employer costs, school days and course days, time off for examinations, tools, and the time an experienced technician spends explaining instead of working. Against that stands a growing productive share from the second year — how many productive hours you may count an apprentice for at all is a calculation of its own. Do both with your own figures: how many productive hours an extra person has to produce to carry themselves is what the labour rate calculator shows.

The duties of a training business are shortly stated and are nonetheless the most frequent point of friction in day-to-day work. Four of them are systematically overlooked.

• Learning materials free of charge. Tools, material and trade literature needed for the training and the examinations come from the business — including what the apprentice has to bring to the examination.
• Time off for school and examinations. A school day is a working day: it counts, and the apprentice does not come back to the workshop for it afterwards. Exactly how that is calculated for you is in the scheme you train under.
• Time for the record of hours. The workbook or logbook is kept during working time, not at home in the evening, and it gets signed off regularly. A book that comes into being in one night three weeks before the examination is noticed.
• No work with nothing to do with the training. The yard gets swept, that is true in every business. An apprentice who spends half a year mostly changing tyres is not being trained but used — and that is the most common reason for dropping out.

With apprentices under 18 there is another layer

For young people, stricter rules apply almost everywhere than for adult staff: their own limits on daily and weekly working time, their own rules on breaks, rest, evening and Saturday work, and in some systems a compulsory medical before starting. Those limits are the reason an underage apprentice does not fit every shift model. Look them up before you put them on the rota, not after.

In many systems the final examination is split: a first part falls before the end of the training, the second at the close. That first part is not retaken and counts towards the final result with a fixed weighting — how large that weighting is stands in the applicable training programme, and that is something you ask about.

In practice that means: the second year of training is not an interim year. Whatever has not been passed on by then is already lost in the final mark, and lost for good. A company training plan that spreads the content across the years is therefore not a formality but the only protection against that.

If the apprentice fails the second part they can resit; at their request the training agreement generally continues until the next examination, up to a certain maximum. That is their right, not your concession — plan for the possibility rather than being surprised by it.

The most expensive mistake does not happen during the training but in the final months. A business that invests for years and only asks whether somebody is staying after the examination is talking to somebody who has had two other offers for a while.

What makes sense is a fixed conversation about six months before the examination, with three things on the table: whether they are staying, on what terms, and what training is included in the first year as a qualified technician. That third point costs the least and works the hardest — a young technician with a promised qualification changes jobs less readily.

If nothing is agreed

If the apprentice simply carries on working after the training ends, with the business's knowledge and without anything else being agreed, an open-ended employment contract arises by itself in many systems. That is not a footnote: anyone wanting to keep the question open has to settle it expressly and in good time, or they have decided without noticing.

One more point for the time after: as soon as the newly qualified technician handles jobs independently, the quality of their job descriptions decides what can be invoiced. Operations with the action stated rather than only a time, parts with a description rather than a collective line — you can pass that on in passing during the training, and it saves arguments at the counter later.